Designing Your Pergola

Pergola is a garden structures that offer shade, a place to eat and rest and an attractive focal point. As far back as 1400 B.C., Egyptians used a series of parallel pergolas as supports for grape vines in their gardens. The Greeks and Romans also included the structures in their gardens. In China, pergolas were often attached to buildings. Since the Tudor period, the English have built pergola in their gardens, particularly in the Victorian era. Today, pergola is a decorative feature of formal and elaborate cottage gardens or outdoor areas.

Pergola Design Ideas

If you want to built a pergola, here are some design ideas for you. Firstly, using cement pillars or 5-by-5s, coupled with overhead latticework in the form of 2-by-4s, you can create a lovely pergola for training and growing grapes. The most important thing to remember when designing a grapevine pergola is that a grapevine can add substantial weight to your overhead lattice. You must, therefore, overbuild your vertical supports, opting for cement or pressure-treated wood with a concrete footing. Train your grapevines up the supports and secure them using gardening tape until they gain a purchase on the overhead lattice.

Pretty Pergola

Then, another design ideas is add color and elegance to a cement walkway or path is to build a rosebush pergola, using store-bought wire-frame archways made of steel. Place these archways every 4 to 5 feet, and plant a trellis-loving variety of rosebush at the base of each, on either side of the path. Train the rose to grow up and over the archway, meeting its counterpart at the top. On the other hand, you have still have several design ideas. Such a three-wall pergola and welded steel tubing. A three-wall pergola is built next to an existing structure, for example, on patios that abut a house or porch. Two posts are set in concrete at the opposite end of the patio from the house wall against which you intend to place your pergola. Overhead beams are then attached to these posts and to wall beams of the house or porch. The effect is of a three-wall gazebo style pergola, which can support rosebushes, honeysuckle or a grapevine.

Pergola With Window Addition

Pergola With Fireplace

Pergola Walkway

A great way to design your pergola is to use welded steel square tubing as your support structure, and overhead lattice. You can then train your grapevine, rosebush, or other vine to grow up these support beams by tying them directly to the square tubing. Once the vine grows sufficiently, the steel tubing will be all but invisible, and the overhead lattice will appear to be supported by the vine itself. These were some design ideas for you. After all, add pergolas to your garden or outdoor area and use them to sit, relax and entertain. Build these functional architectural pieces from scratch or buy ready-made ones to save on contractor fees.